Infotypes or Information Types always form an integral component of any discussion on SAP HCM. In general infotypes are structures to stores related HR data. For example, address of an employee is stored in an unique infotype 0006. Similarly we have different infotypes storing personal data (0002), bank details (0009) , basic salary (0008), etc. Some infotypes are further sub-divided into subtypes, an example being the address infotype. An address entry can belong to the subtype permanent residence, temporary residence, emergency address, mailing address, etc. Infotypes are relevant from a security standpoint as SAP provides standard authorization objects which allow us to secure infotype, subtype combinations for users.

The first thing to note from the above examples is that all of them are attributes of a person. You store address of a person, salary of a person, bank details of a person. Howver, infotypes can just as well store attrbutes of HR objects like positions, jobs, tasks, etc. Depending on whether an infotype stores attributes for a person or a HR object, we can divide them into infotypes required in Personnel Administration (PA) or Personnel Planning (PP) respectively. The PP infotypes are also referrred to as infotypes for Organizational Management (OM)or Personnel Development (PD). The distinction between PA and PP infotypes is important for security as the two basic types of infotypes are secured by means of different authorization objects.

Another point to note from the above examples is the fact that each infotype is associated with an unique 4 digit number. This unique identifier might vary from 0000 to 9999 and is broken into sub-ranges depending on the type of the information stored as shown below

• 0000 – 0999 – Personnel Administration (PA)
• 1000 – 1999 – Personnel Planning (PP)
• 2000 – 2999 – Time Management (PA)
• 4000 – 4999 – Recruitment (PA)
• 9000 – 9999 – Customer Specific (Can store either PA or PP information depending on infotype configuration

This preliminary introduction to infotypes would help us in our later discussions when we investigate ways to secure individual infotypes.